GoKawiilis a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
The Ikko MindOne Pro is delightfully small.
I keep calling it a square phone, which isn’t quite right; the screen is square, but the phone itself is slightly rectangular. The camera flips up so you can use it for selfies — you can even open it partway to use as a stand or a kind of PopSocket. There’s a Clicks-style keyboard accessory that also adds a magnetic ring and a headphone jack. I tried so hard to like it, but this phone is a miss no matter how you look at it.
I used it like a normal phone. I downloaded a minimalist launcher and tried using it as kind of a dumb phone. I put the keyboard case on. I took the keyboard case off. Nothing feels quite right.
Hip to be square.
I first met the MindOne Pro at CES back in January. It’s made by Ikko, a company based in Shenzhen that has mainly produced earbuds and audio accessories until now. The MindOne Pro is the company’s take on a small smartphone, or an AI gadget, or… both I guess. It ships globally and is priced at $499, though it’s currently marked down to $429 on the company’s website.
As charming as the hardware is, I noticed some yellow flags right off the bat when it got significantly warm as I was setting it up. Initial setup is always a lot for a phone’s processor to chew through, but the MindOne got noticeably hotter on that first day out of the box than most phones I use. A week later it has settled down a bit, though it doesn’t take much to warm it up again.
The flip-up main camera does double duty for selfies. It also acts as a kickstand, which honestly rules.
Battery life is also pretty dismal. I watched it drop from the mid 90 percents to the 60s over the course of an hour and a half, and I wasn’t doing anything super taxing. Scrolling through reels, surfing around on Google Maps, and streaming some music — all over Wi-Fi — was enough to eat through a third of the phone’s battery in less than two hours. That doesn’t feel great.
The bad news just keeps coming. The novel camera design is a good idea, but the camera itself just stinks. Color processing is all over the place. It usually handles daylight okay, but photos taken under dim indoor lighting look too green.
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